May Seminar Notes

It is Sunday after one week at the Seminar.
I've taken a lot of notes. Here are some of them.
There are many ideas; most are not attributed--instead, I regard them as the result of the May Seminar community/context.
At this point, it seems like the May Seminar is a giant Invention experience.
If you see one of yours and you need attribution, let me know and I'll adjust it.

From Joyce's presentation Monday:
2.5 years to finish coursework
3.25 years to quals
4-5 years to defense

Dissertations as braintrust of the program


Question: How do you document doctoral culture?

Still's Lunch Presentation

Term: perpetual intermediate @ 77%

Comp journals generally dislike Talk Aloud because it distracts the writer

During presentations, Joyce repeatedly emphasized/critiqued framing

What are the theoretical frameworks for your work?
In presentations, focus on one aspect so that the scope of the question is manageable



Text/data mining enables making specific cognitive connections


DJ Process:
download articles; rd/take notes; spreadsheet ideas (author/yr/label/notes); write

Still paraphrased: "You must understand how people work if you want to improve/abet their flow."

Snake on the Wall: Each time you're interrupted, put a post it up on the wall.

Terms/Ideas:
Deficiency trope
Likert (sp?) scale
content mapping
DEAR as writing process?
Data driven sites
intersections of rhetoric and data mining
Rhizomic structure
textual coding
using data mining tools to discover rhetorical cognitive commonplaces
knowledge telling vs. Knowledge transforming (Schriver)
Correlations between expertise in multiple fields (expertise transfers?)
Embodied Knowledge (Rickly)
Relational thinking
Lived experience research
Single sourcing
Structured Markup
Writing as a technology
axes of history & theory


Grant experts in TTU program:
Rich, Angela, Fred

NCAT
established national standards in use of tech in classrooms
potential source of cash for ed/tech grant money

Tech is compelling; adaptability is vital.

fk:
two kinds of diss: empirical & interpretative
empir comes out of science
interp comes out of lit

Stuart Selber reference

two kinds of empirical:
qualitative & quant

Must be clear on your approach w/your committee

transformation comes from ideas

using social tech makes you rethink everything
questions drive everything

When you write, Prime Directive: Keep Reader Reading

anticipation/expectation to find an answer to a question s/he finds important
w/out the question, there can be no anticipated answer; reader has no reason to keep reading

disturbed knowledge: take a trope and put a new spin on it


resolving the tension of the spun trope, and how it will be done, keeps the reader engaged (want to know who did it in a mystery)

TENSION BETWEEN DISTURBED KNOWLEDGE AND SHARED KNOWLEDGE


the difference between the two generates/facilitates tension

You must know the literature of the field in order to know the reader, what they know, what they don't know, and what they want to know.

To do this, you must manage the field's knowledge
read TOCs of all major journals
read first couple paras of each article (at least)
THIS orients you to landscape so you can set up tension
doing this with ticTOCS tool seems like a good approach to daily/weekly scholarly reading

fk: all scholarly writing is an argument; principal claim must be relevant to field and contestable
if the claim is not potentially refutable, there is no tension


fk:
*can a well secured position in the field be supported & strengthened
*can a well secured position in the field be challenged
*can a gap in field's general or specific knowledge be filled
*can a paradigmatic assumption be challenged (revising a structure of knowledge)


Schriver:
if going into business, learn to listen. Academics often feel need to prove/demonstrate knowledge and talk clients to death to prove own knowledge instead of hearing/listening for what potential clients want.
*fees in field MA 50-125/hr; PhD 100-500/hr (don't do less than 100-250)
*avoid mission creep
*under promise and over deliver
*be willing to revise & repackage
*use Gannt (sp?) or Pert (?) chart to list expenses [practice it if you've never done it before]
*avoid interrogators & people who send you around the company

"If I can't visualize it, I won't read about it."

Lots of consulting work with gov't
We need research on:
work habits of high-achieving professionals
difference in individual processes
value added by excellence is not well understood? (unclear notes on this line)

Expert does right content, level of details, org & channels

Situated nature of expertise
group expertise
social & org influences on expertise

Risk: in-depth knowledge may numb you to others' needs


QUALS:
When reading/structuring for quals, consider categories of
lit review
taxonomy
methods
theory
QUALS is an invitation to contextualize your choices; explain why the methods are appropriate/why you selected it; what the limitations are.

Passing quals: "I am qualified to write a dissertation."
be able to evaluate trends in your field

(parentheticals are academic chest beating)
Dr. Baak

Conceptualize ideas as Venn diagrams
make your Venn diagrams into text

"People tend to subhead when they are insecure"

"I don't think any of us are wowed by opacity."

Merit is already established--don't see critique of quals as judgment of you

Be methodical in your reading, and have a system of taking notes

Be methodical in your approach; limit the number of thread you pursue (focus)
reigning in self is the big challenge

CONTROL YOUR INTERESTS

Remember that your readers are experienced AND they have to do it quickly. Zdenek.
highlight changes that you made in the doc AND leave the Ts comments in doc
MAKE IT EASIER FOR THEM

Lv Prof's questions in the text--and review them: that is what they are thinking about.

During quals, cite and refer to proposal rather than quoting from it

preparing for quals: set up reading times & reading themes (for several weeks)
read for ideas

what Zdenek looks for [my notes could be inaccurate]:
S answer question?>
scholarly in tone, use of cites, well org'd, well supported
is S ready to tackle diss
does S have enough background knowledge to handle diss
do answers anticipate full-blown proposal
has S worked out pre-proposal
has S made intellectual progress
has S articulated the gap
is the gap convincing?
does S have grasp of diss's rationale (so what?)
does S have an even better grasp of methods & attendant issues/probs


quals are a stage in the conversation--not all or 0
margin comments are a warning--don't ignore; be sure to address them

Web Tools
NetVicbes
ticToc
Jing
Zotero
WetPaint.com
Viddler
Seesmic


During presentations, be sure you do not go "here's a cool, one time experience."
include: theory, methods, and rigor

Remember: while we may reference TTU profs/courses during May seminar, DON'T do it at prof conferences

Dragga:
henri bergson major theory/critical lens
set up binary tensions between ethics & legality

Dragga presentation near-quote "Abstractions don't have power to elicit the vital feeling of a moral calling"

legal is often equated with ethical


Rickly:
situate the research of what we believe
cognitive dissonance: outside comfort zone

Mentioned/Recommended readings


Bereiter & Scardamalia (1983) Surpassing Ourselves [B&S's text? or another's?]
Berger, Arthur Media Research Theories
Bergson, Henri Creative Evolution
Bergson, Henri Two Sources of Morality & Religion
Bloom's Taxonomy Book/Article title?
Cho, Schunn, Charney 2006 (comp?) Book/Article title?
Codone, Lackey, Grady 2004 (topic? title?)
Dragga Praiseworthy Grading
Fife & O'neil (comp?) Book/Article title?
Hayes 1989 (properly focused practice? sustained practice?)
Hayhoe editorial in TC 2005 (topic?)
Huot 2002: study; students write for a grade (comp?) Book/Article title?
Johnson-Eilola 1996 "Relocating the Value of Work"
Kuhn: structure of scientific revolutions
Landow 3rd Ed (vocab for cognitive expectations)
Lawrence & Lightfoot (2009) on expertise
Lipson, Carol & R. Binkley Pre-Greek Rhetoric
Manovich, Lev. Language of New Media
Meiring, Dorian Stark (sp?) (research to read. cell phone/dev countries?)
Molich (sp?) everything--usability big boy
Negroponte: Being Digital
Nielsen everything--usability big boy
Papert, Seymour--Mindstorms
St. Amant, Kirk. Multiple articles on cell pphone role in developing countries
UNKNOWN Supercrunchers (database driven culture) {props to Glenn}